Steve Blackman
Blackman made his WWF debut on the November 3, 1997 episode of Raw is War when he jumped the guardrail, to help Vader fend off an attack from the Hart Foundation. Vince McMahon opted for a martial arts gimmick. Blackman was a replacement for the injured Patriot on Team USA (Vader, Goldust, and Marc Mero), at Survivor Series 1997, against Team Canada (British Bulldog, Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart, Phillip Lafon, and Doug Furnas). The following year, Blackman joined Ken Shamrock in his efforts to combat the Nation of Domination. Eventually Blackman broke out on his own, establishing his trademark entrance involving swinging glow-in-the-dark eskrima sticks before walking to the ring. He eventually turned heel after siding with then-heel Shane McMahon. During his run as a heel, he brought a gym bag full of martial arts weapons with him to the ring, including kendo shinai. Blackman would attempt to use the weapons in the bag during or after the match. This was also during the time when he feud with his former partner, Ken Shamrock. The feud would later end after Blackman ran Shamrock over with his car. In late-1998, Blackman competed in the WWF Brawl for All tournament, defeating Marc Mero in the first round. However, he had to withdraw due to injury, allowing Mero to advance by default. Blackman and Al Snow formed a tag team that was known unofficially as Head Cheese, as Snow made Blackman wear a cheesehead hat to complement the mannequin head that Snow carried to the ring. Blackman had a reputation for being very serious and not displaying emotion, so the two put on comedy duo skits with Blackman as the straight-faced man. Many of the skits involved Snow's attempts to come up with a gimmick for their team. In one backstage scene, Snow proposed that the duo develop a TV show wherein they travel through time and solve mysteries. Another memorable sketch involved Snow scheduling an unsuspecting Blackman to perform stand-up comedy at a retirement home, with humorous results. After the Head Cheese team went their separate ways, Blackman entered the WWF's Hardcore Division. At the time, the title was defended 24 hours a day, 7 days a week as established by Crash Holly. Because of this, WWF often ran matches wherein the champion was attacked and defeated in locations not typically associated with wrestling matches, such as backstage or in a hotel. With Blackman as champion, however, surprise attacks no longer resulted in title changes: within the matches, Blackman was so dangerous in hand-to-hand combat that surprise attacks were not effective enough to defeat him. During his stint as Hardcore Champion, Blackman's full martial arts talent was utilized. The first time he lost the title for a significant amount of time was against Shane McMahon, largely due to interference from Test, Albert, Edge, and Christian, with Mick Foley suspending the 24/7 rule to make sure McMahon didn't try to get out of facing Blackman in a rematch. At SummerSlam, Blackman fought McMahon for the title. During that match, Blackman made a 30–40 foot leap off of the TitanTron onto a prone McMahon. Blackman would go on to defend the title on several occasions, but he would ultimately lose the title on a more permanent basis to Raven in late 2000. Early in 2001, Blackman formed another tag team, this time with Grandmaster Sexay. Blackman again played the straight-faced man: a recurring element was that Grandmaster would always try to convince Blackman to dance with him after their matches. In the summer of 2001, Lawler was released from his WWF contract. At around the same time, Blackman suffered an injury, and was released in October 2002.